Perseverance, uzay giysisi malzemelerine yapışan çok ince Mars tozunu ölçtü

Dust has troubled surface exploration since the Apollo era, when lunar grains scratched visors and damaged spacesuit seals, and some crew members reported symptoms resembling hay fever. Now, across 1,645 Martian days, NASA’s Perseverance rover has measured tiny grains clinging to materials on the calibration targets of two of its instruments, PIXL and SHERLOC, including samples of the spacesuit materials Teflon and Vectran. PIXL detected fine particles below 2.5 micrometres and ultrafine ones of around 100 nanometres, the first on-site measurements of such small dust on Mars. Static electricity seems to determine which grain sizes stick to which surface. Larger clumps were shaken off over time, but the smallest particles stayed. On Earth, particles this small can penetrate far into the lungs and pass into the bloodstream. The results, reported in PNAS on 27 October, could help engineers choose materials and design spacesuits, habitats and dust-removal procedures for future crews.